Recently, companies and stores in various industries create virtual stores by way of their own conventional home pages on the Internet. Through such conventional home page arrangements, the companies/stores receive purchase orders.
In this type of conventional electronic shopping system, it is very important to create home pages which will be attractive to common consumers and that will be able to stimulate consumers' purchasing desires. Furthermore, it is desirable to present a variety of goods, enough to satisfy the high and different demands of the consumers.
Unfortunately, the relative cost required to create and maintain effective home pages can be much higher for medium/small sized enterprises or retail shops, than for large sized companies. The introduction of systems for presenting/providing individual home pages for medium/small sized enterprises may not be adequately effective, since the range of the goods to be displayed is limited. Thus, even if a medium/small sized enterprise decides to start an electronic commerce system on their own, it may be difficult to obtain satisfactory effects.
In light of the above, it would be desirable to arrive at a practical franchise system for retailers, such as music record retailers.